1. Technical Field
The invention disclosed broadly relates to automated mail processing and more particularly relates to improvements in the use of optical character recognition for mail processing.
2. Background Information
The technique of deferred processing of OCR scanned mail is disclosed in the copending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 07/426,617, filed Oct. 24, 1989 now U.S. Pat. No. 5,031,223 by Walter S. Rosenbaum, et al., assigned to the IBM Corporation, incorporated herein by reference. The process of deferred processing of OCR scanned mail is based on the concept of "just-in-time manufacturing" as applied to the sorting information required to complete delivery after a physical mail piece is received at a destination postal location. In the copending Rosenbaum, et al. patent application, a physical mail piece is input at the sending postal location and has its front face scanned with an image capturing device to provide a digitized image of at least the destination address block for a mail piece. If the address block is machine readable, a character recognition system analyzes at least the state and city information or the zip code information in the destination address block of the image, providing an alphanumeric string of recognized information representing the city, state and/or zip code for the intended destination of the mail piece. If the address block is not machine readable, for example because it is a handwritten cursive script, then an operator will view the captured image of the address block and will rekey the city, state and zip code, providing the alphanumeric string. With this amount of information, the physical mail piece can be forwarded for physical delivery on a truck, airplane or other conveyance and the process of character recognition for the balance of the destination address block can be deferred. As a part of the process of capturing the image of the destination address block, a serial number is assigned to the physical mail piece and is associated with the captured image in a mail piece electronic folder. The value of the serial number is encoded in barcode form on the mail piece at the sending location. In this manner, the physical mail piece and the electronic folder can be related at the destination postal location. In the copending Rosenbaum, et al. patent application, while the physical mail piece is in transit from the sending location to the destination location, some or all of the balance of the address information in the image of the address block will be character recognized, if the address block is machine readable. If the address block is not machine readable, for example because it is a handwritten cursive script, then an operator will view the captured image of the address block and will rekey some or all of the balance of the address information in the image of the address block. All of the character recognized or rekeyed alphanumeric strings are incorporated into the mail piece electronic folder and transmitted to the destination postal location over a data communications network. When the physical mail piece is received at the destination postal location, its barcode serial number is read from the front of the mail piece and used as a query term for accessing from the data communications network, the portion of the mail piece electronic folder containing the balance of the character recognized information sufficient to perform sorting of the physical mail piece at the destination postal location. In the copending Rosenbaum, et al. patent application, the barcoded serial number is read from the front of the mail piece, the system accesses the character recognized information from the system and that character recognized information is used to drive a mechanical sorting device to sort the physical mail piece into the appropriate sorting scheme for further mechanical delivery stages.
The postal systems in the United States and in other countries have zip code and postal address coding conventions that yield barcoded fields that allow automatic sortation to some desired level during the incoming sort process. For example, the United States has a zip code of nine numerical digits which is used to sort physical mail pieces at the destination postal location down to the postal carrier and in some instances, down to buildings within a carrier's route. However other countries such as Canada, have other postal address code conventions. Canada, for example has a six digit code which consists of alternating alphabetic and numerical characters. The Canadian postal address code is used to sort a physical mail piece down to the carrier.
What is needed is a system employing the deferred OCR processing technique, which provides for the diversity of conventional postal address code formats and information contents used in diverse countries. In addition, what is needed is the ability to use the technique of deferred processing of OCR scanned mail in an existing postal system where a barcode reader reads a conventional postal address code and drives the mechanical sorter to sort the physical mail piece. What is needed is a mechanism for translating the serial number imprinted on the mail piece into the conventional postal address code which is unique to a particular country or region, so as to enable a translated, conventional barcode imprinted on the front of the mail piece to be read by a conventional barcode reader and sorted by a conventional sorting machine, along with all the other mail that has been introduced into the system by other pre-existing postal devices such as OCR sort machines or manual coding desks.